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Cole Mozelesky
Experiences in Literature
Professor Lago
9 February 2014
Literature in a New Age
Reading literature in the digital age is very different than reading in a time when we
didn't have the internet to help us along. Without this infinite source of knowledge, reading
literary works would not be what it is today, especially for the average high school and college
student. Some internet enthusiasts will say it is an advantage using the web to understand
readings more easily by looking it up, while people opposed to the internet will find it a
disadvantage that is hindering the reader for thinking for themselves. This can be backed up for
several reasons, but as technology has progressed it has been shown to be more of a disadvantage
then an advantage. Through some of the works we have read and discussed in class like "My
Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke and "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood, I have found it
detrimental to students' learning and reading abilities to look up the meanings of literary works
online like most of today's students do. Using the internet is hindering students from exercising
their creative minds by letting someone else do it for them who posts what they think on the
internet.
Reading at one time used to be a fun and pleasurable experience, but in the new age it has
slowly turned into a hassle and task to complete, which means the reader is not doing for
pleasure. Reading is no longer an activity to do in spare time. Since this occurrence, students
have found ways to figure out what their readings are about without having to really read and
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comprehend what they are assigned to read. With internet at our fingertips students can now look
up the meaning to almost any text or reading that they are assigned in class. This allows readers
to save the time and hassle of actually reading through the text and deciphering it themselves. In
class when we were handed a poem to read and said to analyze it most of my peers were very
unhappy about it and were not able to fully understand what the poem was trying to portray.
This shows when you take the internet away from students today and ask them to analyze a text
it will be much more difficult to do so if at all.
While reading "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke in class, it was interesting
hearing all of the interpretations that people had to say about what they had read since everyone
had read the same thing. Some people talked about how it could be simply describing a son and
his father dancing around the kitchen while his father was drunk until as stated in the poem,
"waltzed me off to bed, still clinging to your shirt" (Roethke 1). Other people, including myself
sensed a darker force in the poem where we felt it was describing a boy who got beaten by his
father that was symbolized by the waltz theme of the poem. This was shown in the line "The
Hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; at every step you missed my right ear
scraped a buckle"(Roethke 1). I picture this as the father holding the son's wrist and beating him
in the face with his fist and a belt buckle. This brings up the issue that if all of us looked up what
the poem meant instead of taking our time and trying to figure out what he was trying to portray
in his poem, we would all have the same interpretation of the poem that would not truly our own.
This stunts the readers creative thought process when critically reading works because by
looking up what the meaning it the reader doesn't have to think about what they are reading. On
one website I looked up while writing this paper I found it interesting that it said "most come to
read it as a boy's recollection of his father's playful rough-housing--perhaps a bit too roughly
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after a few drinks, but not in anger"( Rowens 1). This is a completely different idea than what I
thought about, which backs up my idea of how everyone has different opinions. This does not
mean that the site is wrong, but it does suggests that readers have very little reason to look up
meanings of text because what the reader perceives a text to mean will never be wrong if they
can back what they are stating.
This was not only limited to the poems we read in class, but I also noticed it the poem
"Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood. While reading this work I found it much more enjoyable
to read and interpret it on my own rather than looking it up online. Most youth today are tempted
to look up interpretations online rather than do the work on their own. With this work I found the
title to be ironic "Happy Endings" considering the endings all revolved around the theme of
death. One line that I found very interesting was "The only authentic ending is the one provided
here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die" (Atwood 1). To some this may
confuse, but I take this as the writer making it very clear that the reader needs to stop and really
take in everything they just read. It acts as a stop sign and slows down time, this is where I
thought about what the real meaning of why she wrote the short story, to say that no matter what
kind of story happens in the end the characters always die and the ending is the same, only the
beginnings are different. It was written pretty straight forward, but all of the stories were
connected and covered what a lot of love story plots follow. I think it was written to show that
not all endings are happy endings and for the reader to question what a happy ending really is.
For this analysis of the poem I did not use any help from the internet. I had to critically think
about what I was reading and while doing this I was expanding my mind without being force fed
someone else's analysis.
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As a musician, I come across many ambiguous and poetic writings through music. I can
see this as being one advantage of being a musician, because with this I have somewhat more
experience on reading poetry like works and decoding them to figure out what the artist is trying
to convey in the song. In high school I attended a lyrical poetry class where we would go over
and analyze song lyrics line by line which is where I first learned the importance of reading line
by line to try to figure out the message. Even for song lyrics there are many sites that will explain
the meanings of songs for you, but I also find this very unhelpful and limiting. By taking a closer
look on these sites you can see that it is just people arguing over what a song means, when in the
end they all are right if they can back up their claims they are making. If someone is looking up
the meaning to a song or piece of literature they are really just reading someone else's take on
what it meant, and not your own. This takes away a lot of creative thinking that can occur when
trying to read ambiguous poetry and short stories. If I have the time I personally think that you
will get much more out of a text by reading it and coming up with a conclusion on what it meant
to yourself, and from the writers perspective, this is exactly what the writer wanted when he or
she wrote the text. There is no wrong answer when describing what poetry means to you as long
as you back it up with your own opinion. There is no need to look up the meaning of a poem on
the internet for this reason unless it is to research to see what allusions the writer used in the text.
One video I first came across in my first year seminar class talks about the issue that the
internet and social media affecting this generation's brains in very unhealthy ways. It brings up
the fact that we are becoming "superficial thinkers", as Nicholas Carr, the author of The
Shallows states. Since primitive times, we have searched for more information as an instinctual
survival tactic that would also make our brains release dopamine, a pleasure response to your
body. Today we don't have to learn too much for survival because we are not threatened by
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predators anymore, but our brains still want all the information they can get. This is where the
internet steps in. We have this flow of continuous information at our finger tips, which becomes
an addiction due to the dopamine released in your brain (Epipheo). The Brain thinks it is doing
its job and collecting information that it needs to survive. In reality, it's just taking in some
opinions of other people, but not making any of its own.
Google and the internet has changed the way most students perceive reading texts that are
not written out straight forward and take time to read to understand the depth of the words
written. With poetry, what is written is not always what is meant, which to some can be a hard
concept to grasp, hence the internet has aided with by giving means of many works of literature
out there today. While looking up the meanings to what is assigned to read it may save time, but
in the long run you are only hurting yourself by not getting the full depth of the reading, and not
working out your brains creative side and becoming a better reader. Students today do not see
this side of the problem because they only see the here and now, not the future. While reading
literature you are suppose to use your critical reading skills, not look up what one persons
opinion on the piece is. We still have yet to see all of the consequences of the internet when it is
related to reading literary texts. We don't need the internet to figure out that the meanings of
what we read are in our heads, everyone's are different but everyone's perception is right. If you
don't use it you lose it, and this generation is slowly losing their critical reading skills to the
internet.



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Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret."Happy Endings." Scribd. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014
Roethke, Theodore. "My Papa's Waltz." Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
Rowens. "What Is the Meaning of "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke? -
Homework Help - ENotes.com." Enotes.com. Enotes.com, n.d. Web. 09 Feb. 2014.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaWJ72x1rI Epipheo. "What the Internet is Doing to
Our Brains" YouTube. 6 May 2013. Web. 28 January 2014